The Professionals

Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it's no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise - quick, efficient, low risk - works like a charm. Until they kidnap the wrong man. Now two groups they've very much wanted to avoid are after them - the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized-crime outfit looking for payback.

The Love Killings: Detective Matt Jones, Book 2

For the past six weeks, LAPD detective Matt Jones has been recovering from the wrong end of a hit man's bullet. Before he can look for payback, Jones finds himself enlisted in the manhunt for an old foe. Dr. George Baylor, the serial killer who escaped after murdering three coeds in LA, resurfaces on the East Coast. This time, an entire family has been slaughtered in their home outside Philadelphia, and the doctor's fingerprints are all over the crime scene.

The Wild Inside: A Novel of Suspense

For fans of Louise Penny, C. J. Box, and Nevada Barr comes a haunting crime novel set in Glacier National Park, where one man finds himself on a collision course with the dark heart of the wild and the even darker heart of human nature.

Bad Country

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.

DanBudda says:"Wow!! Please give this book a chance to knock you off your feet!"

No Coming Back

Eighteen years ago, Jenna Luckman disappeared, presumed murdered. Her boyfriend, Jake Olson, hasn't been home since. Now he's coming back to find her killer. When a body is discovered at the frozen Hangman Falls, Jake is beset by a snowstorm of anger and revenge. Hounded by grudges and feared by the townsfolk, Jake is determined to uncover the truth behind his girlfriend's disappearance. But he still has enemies in town and they have other plans for him.

Manitou Canyon: Cork O'Connor Mystery Series

Since the violent deaths of his wife, father, and best friend all occurred in previous Novembers, Cork O'Connor has always considered it to be the cruelest of months. Yet his daughter has chosen this dismal time of year in which to marry, and Cork is understandably uneasy. His concern comes to a head when a man camping in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness goes missing. As the official search ends with no recovery in sight, Cork is asked by the man's family to stay on the case.

Hot Start: The Cordell Logan Mysteries, Book 5

A notorious, international big-game hunter and his beautiful, former dental hygienist wife are gunned down at long range late one sweltering summer night, while swimming naked on their seaside estate in opulent Rancho Bonita, California. Police investigators are convinced that the killer is a strident, outspoken animal-rights activist, with both military experience and a criminal record. The evidence against him would appear overwhelming - until rumors begin to surface that others may have had their own reasons for committing murder.

City of Echoes: Detective Matt Jones, Book 1

On Detective Matt Jones's first night working Homicide in LA, he's called to investigate a particularly violent murder case: a man has been gunned down in a parking lot off Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting the Strip for months.

Shady Cross

In one hand small-time crook Stokes holds a backpack stuffed with someone else's money--$350,000 of it. In the other hand, Stokes has a cell phone, which he found with the money. On the line a little girl he doesn't know asks, "Daddy? Are you coming to get me? They say if you give them the money, they'll let you take me home."

Justice Redeemed

Two years ago, Darren Street made a name for himself as the man who rooted out corruption in the district attorney's office. Now the hotheaded young lawyer is in the public eye yet again - this time, accused of murder. Jalen Jordan retained Street for what seemed to be a minor traffic violation, but when evidence turned up linking Jordan to the death of two boys, Street wanted out of the case.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye: A Harry Bosch Novel, Book 21

Harry Bosch is California's newest private investigator. He doesn't advertise, he doesn't have an office, and he's picky about who he works for, but it doesn't matter. His chops from 30 years with the LAPD speak for themselves. Soon one of Southern California's biggest moguls comes calling. The reclusive billionaire has less than six months to live and a lifetime of regrets. He hires Bosch to find out whether he has an heir.

Flat Spin: A Cordell Logan Mystery

The irresistible David Freed’s first mystery is a stay-up-late-to-finish thriller. Based in sunny Rancho Bonita - “California’s Monaco”, as the city’s moneyed minions like to call it - Cordell Logan is a literate, sardonic flight instructor and aspiring Buddhist with dwindling savings and a shadowy past. When his beautiful ex-wife, Savannah, shows up out of the blue to tell him that her husband has been murdered in Los Angeles, Logan is quietly pleased. Savannah’s late husband, after all, is Arlo Echevarria, the man she left Logan for.

An Obvious Fact

In the midst of the largest motorcycle rally in the world, a young biker is run off the road and ends up in critical condition. When Sheriff Walt Longmire and his good friend, Henry Standing Bear, are called to Hulett, Wyoming - the nearest town to America's first national monument, Devils Tower - to investigate, things start getting complicated.

Escape Clause: A Virgil Flowers Novel, Book 9

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large and very rare Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they've been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others - as Virgil is about to find out.

The Prettiest One: A Thriller

When Caitlin Sommers finds herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented her for years...but it's all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where she's been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers.

Orphan X

Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.

Bitter Moon: The Huntress/FBI Thrillers, Book 4

FBI agent Matthew Roarke has been on leave, and in seclusion, since the capture of mass killer Cara Lindstrom - the victim turned avenger who preys on predators. Torn between devotion to the law and a powerful attraction to Cara and her lethal brand of justice, Roarke has retreated from both to search his soul. But Cara's escape from custody and a police detective's cryptic challenge soon draw him out of exile to probe an unsolved murder that could be the key to her long and deadly career.

The Short Drop

A decade ago, fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lombard, the daughter of Benjamin Lombard - then a senator, now a powerful vice president running for the presidency - disappeared in the most sensational missing-person case in the nation's history. Still unsolved, the mystery remains a national obsession. For legendary hacker and marine Gibson Vaughn, the case is personal - Suzanne Lombard had been like a sister to him.

The Guise of Another

A former Medal of Valor winner, Minnesota detective Alexander Rupert is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. So when he's asked to look into the false identity of a car-accident victim named James Putnam, a man who in fact died 15 years earlier, Rupert sees a potentially big case and an opportunity to regain his respectability. But the investigation puts him in the path of "the Beast", the nom de guerre of Drago Basta, a cunning veteran of the Balkan wars.

Fool Me Once

Former special ops pilot Maya, home from the war, sees an unthinkable image captured by her nanny cam while she is at work: her two-year-old daughter playing with Maya's husband, Joe - who had been brutally murdered two weeks earlier. The provocative question at the heart of the mystery: Can you believe everything you see with your own eyes, even when you desperately want to?

The Silent Girls

Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective's badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an '89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace. Soon Rath's investigation brings him face to face with the darkest abominations of the human soul.

Ashes to Ashes

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

The Obsidian Chamber

After a harrowing otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive - only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown....

Bull Mountain

Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations the Burroughs clan has made their home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton takes the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can.

Publisher's Summary

The new Stevens and Windermere novel from the author of the dazzlingly acclaimed The Professionals - "one of the best debuts of the year" (Mystery Scene).

From the outside, Carter Tomlin's life looked perfect: a big house, pretty wife, two kids - a St. Paul success story. But Tomlin has a secret. He's lost his job, the bills are mounting, and that perfect life is hanging by a thread. Desperate, he robs a bank. Then he robs another.

As the red flags start to go up, FBI Special Agent Carla Windermere homes in on Tomlin from one direction, while Minnesota state investigator Kirk Stevens picks up the trail from another. The two cops haven't talked since their first case together, but that's all going to change very quickly.

Because Carter Tomlin's decided he likes robbing banks. And it's not because of the money; not anymore. Tomlin has guns and a new taste for violence. And he's not quitting anytime soon.

The plot is reminiscent of, well, the author's first novel: a normal sort of person is lured into a life of crime almost by chance and gets more and more corrupted by the experience as he goes along. To be honest, I was a little surprised: was this going to be Mr. Laukkanen's premise in every novel? (Could we expect, for example, an art teacher to become an art thief in his next one?) Still, the writing was so entertaining -- and Mr. Ballerini so superb as the reader, as usual -- that I didn't really mind. In the end, I found it to be even better than The Professionals. The line between the good and the bad guys is clearer here. The personal 'qualities' that make the main character keep on robbing banks more believable (although there are plenty of improbable coincidences but, again, I did not mind). Tons of surprises. Tons of fun.

I have received so many good tips in Richard in San Anselmo, California that I hate to disagree so adamantly with his review of this book. This book is simply dreadful. If it could be given zero stars I would have done that, but fortunately the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini, is so good that he drags it kicking and screaming from a 0 to a 1.

As for the publishers description... it is pretty accurate, so I will not rehash that. The plot starts out reasonably enough but then gets carried to an extreme that is simply no longer logical. Those of you readers who pay attention to details like ballistics, finger prints, etc. will certainly notice that there are some huge issues that are never addressed in the book. Why? I have no idea. Serious and dreadful crimes are committed, and in one case the careful reader will immediately think "why, they are going to recognize her" long before the crime is committed... and yet the crime proceeds completely and totally illogically. Crimes that should be tied together early on are missed because of faulty (read that as NO) police procedures.

If you are one of those Audible readers that keeps track of details, that looks for good character development, requires that the characters in the book (both good guys and bad guys) act at least intelligently and if not intelligently then at least an understandable manner, then you should absolutely pass on this book.

If you love mysteries and thrillers, and look for logical behavior where the good guys move inexorably to a satisfying conclusion (with a few reasonable twists and roadblocks along the way), then again you should pass on this book. It will drive you bonkers.

If you like characters to whom you can relate or even like, then you should pass on this book.

There are just tons of technical errors in this book.

There are a number of errors in grammar, but with the US schools turning out such poor quality students, a tend to forgive these errors as I am delighted when I read a sentence with both a subject and predicate. Thankfully, Owen Laukkanen was educated in Canada.

Why all the errors? I do not know whether this is the fault of the person(s) who proof read the book and simply did not read it in a critical manner and catch the discrepancies before submission, or maybe the editors just felt like they had to publish something that day. If I listed all the errors, it would almost certainly spoil the book, and I don't want to do that. But I will again warn you that if you are one of those detailed type readers who really enjoys mysteries and thrillers, you will find so many distractions that will keep you from simply enjoying this book to its full potential. I call them the "what the hell?" moments and they drive critical readers like me right out of our minds. I will not even mention all the numerous clichés.

Sadly, there are also no likable characters in this book. Windermere from the FBI is just a very unlikable selfish self-involved thoughtless person. She is arrogant to the nth degree. Her police procedurals are terrible. Her personality is such that she antagonizes everybody that she works with including the reader. Her FBI partner was no gem, but frankly, I agreed with much of his assessment of her.

Stevens from the BCA Minnesota is a character added to the book because if he was not added to the book, Windermere could do absolutely nothing because she angers everybody she works with.

At one point, Stevens proceeds to do something so stupid, and so patently illogical (not to mention illegal) that it rates high in my "what the hell?" list. It is just simply contrived. His stupid actions were apparently required for no other reason than to justify his existence in the book and help Windermere with her problem.

Unnecessary, it also will draw Stevens teenaged daughter into the mix eventually endangering her life as well. No, this is not a spoiler, because anyone reading the book will immediately be able to predict what's going to happen. Oh... PS: This author either has no teenage kids or never talks to them. The ones in this novel also behave illogically and their dialog is just not 21st century teenspeak... even if they are from Minnesota.

The climax is just silly. Again I do not want to say too much so as to avoid spoiling this book should you decide to waste a credit, but any of you who have visited the Minneapolis area will immediately just start laughing when you find out where the bad guy finally gets his comeuppance and the descriptions thereof.

Side note: There also seems to be a new trend with some of the younger authors (this guy is about 30) to add (by innuendo if not directly) their political leanings whether liberal or conservative, to the books that they are writing. Little "comments in passing". They also seem to throw in a certain amount of political correctness. Hint to author: Not everyone acts or speaks in a politically correct manner and many don't want to! Bad guys seldom do. I strongly believe that this has no place in literature. Tell the story, and leave out your personal agenda and the other junk.

I really loved Mr. Laukkanen's first book. I really love this one too. And Mr. Ballerini has now firmly installed himself as my favorite narrator since Frank Muller, which is high praise, indeed. Like the first book, this one is a race down a highway to hell. It does not have the feel of a sequel, though. Carter Tilton, the head of the gang, bears little semblance to Pender, the main crazy in the first book. An accountant who loses his job, and who has a mansion and a family, Tilton gets quickly sucked down into the vortex (I just had to use that trope, I know) of crime, and his crimes rise rapidly in their violence. He starts with little notes to bank tellers, and proceeds to much higher wattage crime in a hurry. His female assistant is just as wacko as he. Her boyfriend drives the getaway car. The team of Kirk Stevens of the Minnesota BPA and Carla Windermere of the FBI is once again charming. They are in dogged pursuit of the criminals, and they both just will not quit. The sexual tension is everywhere: between the two of them, between Tilton and his wife Becca, between Tilton and Tricia, his accomplice. You can cast the movie in your mind with favorite actors. I would absolutely love Cate Blanchett in the Tricia role. As you can see, I had a lot of fun with this book. Laukkanen writes very well, with authority, with an informed sense of place that makes you believe he lives in Minneapolis-St. Paul (although in the first book I could have sworn that he lived in Seattle). He puts you in the car and drives you with each turn of events. There is no way that you can put this book down, other than to catch your breath. I also love that the editor/publisher allows Mr. Ballerini to read at his own pace: his voice is lustrous, his pacing exactly right, his ability to do precisely what the author wants him to do: all exactly on the money. I have heard a few books in which he was clearly pushed to go too fast, which was something that was done to Mr. Muller, too, on occasion. When you allow these guys to slow down, they show you every nuance of their mighty skills. I would dearly love it if Mr. Ballerini had a career as long as or even longer than that of Mr. Muller, who died in a motorcycle accident when he was in his fifties. A voice this rich, combined with the actorly skills and all the rest: we could be in for one of the most enjoyable audiobook careers imaginable. Listen to this. Trust me. Would I steer you wrong?

Here we go again...an author who not only can't get rid of unnecessary "that"s, doesn't know the difference between "bring" and "take", but uses the horrendous "these ones". Note to author: if you or your editor don't know better, A. fire the editor or, B. find a new profession. I quit reading at the first "these ones" and will never read/listen to another book by this author for that reason alone. (He's not the first to fall in this category.)

In the course of his daily life, when money gets tight and his job prospects are uncertain, the hero discovers he's a psychopath. He's just another man on the make in materialist America, and then he isn't. Very well done.

The detectives may not believe in "unlikely coincidences," but this story line requires the listener to do so. Chance meetings and fortuitous encounters beggar the imagination. Nevertheless, I intend to continue listening to Laukkanen's works because they are, to me, preferable to those of many other of this ilk.

I enjoyed the first book in this series last week. Mr Laukkanen was new to me, and I was happy to find that there were a few more in the series already released. Book number 2 might be slightly better than number 1. Mr Laukkanen seems to take normal people in tough situations and create criminals. In the first book I found the antagonists more likable than Carter Tomlin. He goes too far off the tracks becoming a cold-blooded murderer who finds it easy to overlook and abandon his wife and daughter. I found it hard to believe he would become so bad so quickly. Pender and his friends from book one felt more real, more plausible and more sympathetic. Having said that, I felt the escalation of the crime wave was more credible in this book, and the exploration of our two heroes had more depth. I will certainly read book number 3, and have high hopes that Mr Laukkanen will continue to develop the storylines and the lead characters.